Anxiety, Perfectionism, and the Path to Self-Love | Anastasia Zadeik

00:00
And I was feeling defensive because in my head I was thinking, I just wanted to bring some beauty into our house and I still didn't. Nothing I do is right. And it was like years of holding all that inside came out in a way that was shocking, as shocking to me as it was to him. And I went from a rational person.

00:29
to thinking and feeling, and I don't want to say that this was like, I see it now, I see that it was coming. Like if I look back now, I can see the signs, we're all there, but I wasn't aware of it at the time, but what I wanted to do was just end the pain. I wanted to stop hating myself. I wanted to stop existing because to exist meant

00:56
You can't run away from yourself wherever you go, you're still there. It's exhausting. And so I was planning to go for a hike and I ended up running out of the house, leaving the door open, leaving my phone behind. And as I left, I shouted to my husband, maybe you'll be lucky and maybe I'll jump. And I got in the car and I drove away. My guest this week is Anastasia Zadeik.

01:25
Anastasia is an accomplished writer and an editor, and a lot of other things as well, but her life has been really marked by a series of ups and downs. Her struggles with mental health, particularly depression and anxiety, have been a significant part of the journey, and it's that journey that she's really generously shared with me in such a raw and authentic way. In fact, so much so that when I was editing this episode, I felt compelled to reach back out to her and thank her for what she shared.

01:54
We talk a lot about perfectionism and the toll that it can take on our mental well-being. Her experience shows how this all-consuming drive for perfection, really fueled by societal pressures and these high expectations that we put on ourselves, can lead to self-loathing and anxiety. It's a powerful reminder of the dangers of chasing that unattainable ideal and the importance of self-acceptance and what we'll talk about a lot in this and you'll hear my message to her, self-love.

02:23
We also dive into the nuances of living with mental health issues, and Anastasia shares how even minor triggers can lead to intense emotional responses. But her decision to seek help during a crisis serves as a reminder of the crucial role of reaching out during times like these. No one's alone in their struggles and help is always available. And I think that's the central theme of our conversation today. So without further ado, here is my conversation with Anastasia Zadeik. I'm Matt Gilhooly.

02:53
And this is The Life Shift, candid conversations about the pivotal moments that have changed lives forever.

03:11
Hello, my friends. Welcome to the LifeShift Podcast. I am here with Anastasia. Hello. Hi. Thank you for having me. It's really a pleasure to be here. Well, thank you for being here remotely. If you're listening for the first time, I do all of these recordings with essentially strangers who by the end of episodes become like long lost friends that I didn't know I had. So thanks again for being a part of this journey. For anyone that's listening for the first time, this really, the show started as a school assignment. I was doing a master's degree.

03:40
during the pandemic and I took a podcasting class and it was just gonna be a two episode assignment. And I really took it seriously in that class to try to attach it to something that really means a lot to me. And so for anyone listening, my mom died in a motorcycle accident when I was eight years old. And this was late 80s, early 90s and not a lot of people were kind of like talking about mental health and helping kids through. Kids will bounce back, kids will be fine.

04:07
And I spent the next 20 years or so trying to navigate that grief journey. And really curious if other people had this significant moment in their life that like everything changed after that. Turns out a lot of people do. A lot of people have a lot of those moments in their lives. And so the life shift was really born out of that own personal experience and my curiosity and talking to other people about how they made it through particular moments in their lives that changed everything. And so. So.

04:36
looking forward to hearing about your journey. I know it's a tough journey. I know it's something that's hard to share sometimes for a lot of people, but unfortunately, fortunately, there's a lot of people out there that will take inspiration from what you've done with said moments and the things that you've done since. And so I think that's why we're here, to share these stories and kind of connect in this way that we're really not that alone as much as we might think we are in certain moments. Yeah.

05:05
I totally agree with that. I think that when you mentioned that back in the 80s and 90s, people weren't talking about mental health. It's absolutely true in my opinion. I mean, in my experience as well. I have for the last, I'm now 60, so I've had a number of life shifting moments. When I was listening to some of your other podcasts, I was with my mom when she died of early onset Alzheimer's, my stepdaughter.

05:32
Her mom died of a heroin overdose when she was living with me, and I had to tell her mom had died. My dad died after a year in and out of medical facilities after her surgery went wrong. And I gave the eulogy at his funeral, and that was a life-shifting moment for me. So I've had a lot of them. But the one that I wanted to talk about today is something that was probably brewing for most of my life.

06:01
And when I look back on it now, I can see the signs of depression and anxiety that I have been struggling with and managing most of the time with exercise, journal writing, some yoga, talking a little bit with close family and friends, but mostly I masked. I was an excellent masker. I was the fourth of five. Same.

06:29
And there's so many people like us. I was the fourth of five children. We were all born really close together. I had an incredibly happy childhood with a few things that happened here and there that weren't, which I've talked about in other settings. So I won't go into that today. But I always had a hard time sleeping. Starting in middle school, I had to take a low dose.

06:56
anti-anxiety medication before I ate because I had developed a nervous colitis as a little kid. I didn't put any of this together until I was much older. I had a really bad bout of insomnia my junior year. I had been attending Smith College and went to Stanford my junior year. It was a huge shift. I ended up developing really bad insomnia and actually had what I now understand was a psychotic break.

07:26
after four days of not sleeping at all. And ended up for a short time going into therapy with, talk therapy with a psychologist at Smith. And that helped, but I didn't ever think of myself as somebody who had a serious issue. Though now when I look back, I realize I did, especially when I read some of those journals that I was writing, one of the most notable features of my entries is a strong sense of self-loathing.

07:55
I really, really still struggle with that even now. When you look back on that before you jump in, when you look back on that now, do you see that, like, were there societal things that were coming into play that maybe were influencing that? Because I think sometimes it's hard to see these things in the moment. And then upon, like, years later, reflecting back, you're like, oh, it's clear why I absorbed.

08:22
this or why I absorb those kind of things or even the self loathing thing. Do you see connections to things that were happening in your world? Yeah, absolutely. When I mentioned earlier that I was the fourth of five children, because we were all really close, I kind of took on the role of being the perfect one to try to be noticed. I always did everything that I was supposed to do. I always did it. I was the straight A student, the cheerleader, the...

08:49
member of the National Honor Society, the yearbook editor, like I did it all. And I did it all with a smile on my face. But inside, I was nervous, like nervous all the time. Because what if you weren't perfect? What if I wasn't perfect? And though it was something that was encouraged, my father had very, very high hopes for me, which was, and therefore, very high expectations, which was not unique to me. But he had high expectations for himself and everyone around him. But for some reason, he was.

09:18
He thought that I was going to be this Supreme Court Justice, President of the United States, all of those kinds of really high aspirations. And for a long time, I thought that I was living to please him. And I realized at some point that I internalized it. And it's hard every day to do everything right, because you can't, because no one is perfect. And I had this tendency, it wouldn't matter how many things I had done.

09:48
according to me correctly, I would focus on the one thing I did wrong. And that could keep me up at night. It could be as silly as wearing the wrong shoes to something. And I would recognize on some level, intellectually, that I was being ridiculous. But inside, I couldn't let it go. I would lie there thinking and... Because you thought maybe your dad would be disappointed if he found out that that one element...

10:17
Or anyone else. Anyone else might have noticed. Like it got to the point. But then, you know, I realized I wasn't living with my dad anymore. I was, you know, on my own and I still was doing it. I think at that point it had become me. I was, I was my own judge and I was incredibly You didn't know any other way. That's right. And I was incredibly, I'm, I'm, I'm, I don't judge other people. I'm kinder to everyone else than to myself. And everyone will tell me that. I'll be like,

10:45
But you wouldn't be upset with me for doing that. I'd be like, no, of course not. So even now, I just wrote a post for Substack just a couple of weeks ago about trying to understand this concept of self-love that still is. I get it. Like hard for me to grasp the idea that you could actually love yourself. Like I don't, I get it intellectually, but to actually feel that, I'm not sure that I can. Yeah, I'm not sure that I ever could.

11:15
I mean, I felt love from my parents. They were lovely, my siblings. But me loving myself, that's a bridge too far. But then someone gave me a strategy that I kind of tweaked. They said, well, don't think about it as developing love for yourself. It should happen in an organic way. Just do nice things for yourself. Give yourself love. And then I thought of this psychological thing I learned in a sociology class in college.

11:42
that's based on cognitive dissonance, that if someone doesn't like you and you ask them to do you a favor that they can't refuse, so it's really easy to do, and they do it because they most likely will, that they will like you more because in their brain, they think to themselves, well, I must like that person because I did something for them. And if you do it over and over, they'll actually start to like you. So I thought, well, maybe I can do that for myself. I'll just do little favors for myself.

12:10
and I'll fool myself into thinking that I like myself. That's still the jury's out. I've only been doing it for two weeks. That's interesting though, because I think it's similar for me. I mean, different trigger, but like when my mom died and I had to, I moved in with my father, who was not my primary parent at the time, I felt this sense of needing to be perfect, but I needed to do everything perfect. But my fear was that my dad was also going to leave.

12:38
in the sense that my mom left. And so this, I internalized the same thing and then it just became this cycle that that was just me. And it sounds like you did very similar thing. Like there was no other version of me that could exist in a world where I got to be and it was okay or I got, you know, like whatever it might be. There was no way.

13:01
And that just continued through my 20s and my 30s. And so I get it. And I don't think we're alone in this. I think there's a sense. And probably, too, I would hope that maybe current teenagers and maybe the newer generations are different or approaching it differently. I don't know. I'm not sure, because one of the things that I did not have, thank God, when I was growing up,

13:29
was social media and that whole idea of a curated world that you're supposed to exist in, where everywhere you look, everyone else's life looks perfect. Some people now will post about mental health struggles and other struggles, but the vast majority of what you see on social media is curated. People put their best photos up and they tweak them and they...

13:56
put up the best events of their life. So if you look at it, you only think that that's all there is. So I think if I had had that, and also the fact that every mistake could be captured on film, like that really awful outfit you wore is going to be on someone's feed. I think that it could feed that in some people like you and I who are already looking for our faults. You're going to see them.

14:24
more publicly than we did. We could go to a party and say something stupid, and the next day there was no record of it other than people's memories. Now there could be a record of it. So I actually fear for a lot of the young people who are growing up with that as their reality. It's almost like a shift in what's real. But I feel for you, losing your mom at eight, ugh.

14:49
My mom once went to the hospital when I was about that age, overnight. And I remember just feeling like everything in our house went off balance without her. So losing her at that age, I just... I don't think I understood it. I think like at eight, I don't know, it just, everything changed for me. And so maybe if I had to go back to the same house and live in the same space, there would have been a different...

15:19
closure, there would have been a different something. But because every, the school changed, the state changed, the parent changed, the accents around me changed, everything changed. It was a very weird experience. And I say that only because the way we internalize what's happening around us shapes how we react to it. In your case, with this perfectionism piece that comes along, creates your insomnia.

15:46
It creates your anxiety. It creates physical ailments because of all those pieces. I can see how something like that just builds and builds and builds until your body's like, no more. I mean, it sounds like that's what you got to a point in which. That's exactly what happened. It's like the snowball was just too big. It couldn't go anywhere. The snowball was too big. And I think that during COVID, my coping mechanism stopped working. And I think that that was partly because the world had

16:15
shifted in a significant way for everyone. And most people, our life patterns were disrupted in ways that were hard to fathom. And even though I was still doing a lot of walking and things like that, I wasn't doing the same kind of exercise. I couldn't go to yoga classes. I was at home doing some yoga online and it was just a very different thing.

16:43
So all of those things that I had used to maintain and manage my depression and anxiety were minimized in a way. And I found myself beginning to struggle more and more. And one day I came downstairs and I had had some flowers on the table and they were, I needed to refresh the bouquet. So I went outside to get some more flowers and I had scissors in my hand and fresh flowers and I was coming in to

17:13
Clip the ends of everything and make a new bouquet. And I left the door open. And my husband came down and said, are you going back outside? And this should have been a nothing thing for me. It's a simple question. But it was like I interpreted it as a criticism that I had left the door open. And I went over the edge. Like just couldn't.

17:44
I couldn't, I don't remember much about the conversation other than that it was reflecting back on it. I feel so sorry for my husband because I wasn't, the logic had gone. I couldn't talk about anything logically and all I heard in everything that he was saying was criticism and this message. You're a...

18:15
And I'm not sure if I'm allowed to swear a total fuck up. There's nothing. That's what I was hearing. I was hearing that and I was feeling defensive because in my head I was thinking, I just wanted to bring some beauty into our house and I still didn't. Nothing I do is right. And it was like years of holding all that inside.

18:42
came out in a way that was shocking, as shocking to me as it was to him. And I went from a rational person to thinking and feeling, and I don't want to say that this was like, I see it now, I see that it was coming. Like if I look back now, I can see the signs were all there. But I wasn't aware of it at the time. But I

19:10
What I wanted to do was just end the pain. I wanted to stop hating myself. I wanted to stop existing because to exist meant, you can't run away from yourself wherever you go, you're still there. It's exhausting. And so I was planning to go for a hike and I ended up.

19:34
running out of the house, leaving the door open, leaving my phone behind. And as I left, I shouted to my husband, maybe you'll be lucky and maybe I'll jump. And I got in the car and I drove away. And on the way, I was going to a place where I always hike. It's it's a cliffside mount. It's a cliffside hike on the Pacific Ocean. And on the way there, I was thinking about where I would jump. Should I dive or should I?

20:04
jump feet first, how long will it take me to hit? Then I saw these pylons for construction and I thought, would it be faster if I just drove into those at 80 miles an hour? But then I thought, but what if I live, then I'll be even more of a burden to my family. So that's out, I can't do that. Whatever I do has to be 100% sure, right? That it's gonna work. It has to be perfect in your mind. So I remember getting to the bottom, parking the car.

20:32
and thinking I didn't bring water. And then I realized I didn't have my phone. But I thought the water didn't matter because if I get dehydrated, does it matter when you're dead if you were dehydrated or not? No, like that's how my brain was working. And then I got to the top of the hill and I started walking towards where I was intending to jump and I...

20:55
started thinking about the fact that because I left my phone behind, my husband might call my kids and my kids might be scared and I didn't want my kids to be scared. So I borrowed a phone from somebody which wasn't easy because it was still COVID and these four men were walking along and they all had masks on and I had a mask on and I asked to borrow a phone and you could tell they really didn't want to loan me a phone because nobody was loaning phones, right? You're going to get germs on it. But one guy said, yeah, sure. So I texted my husband.

21:24
And I said, it's me, I'm okay. And I gave him back the phone and I kept walking, still thinking I was gonna do this and realizing that I just typed a total lie, but it was my lie. It's the lie that I've been telling my whole life. I'm okay. I'm okay, I'm okay, I'm fine. I'm okay. And then all of a sudden there was this glimmer as I was walking, a glimmer that was just enough for me to think about my kids and to think.

21:52
of what I would be doing to them. And I realized this was a place we often hiked as a family. I would be ruining that for them. I would be ruining hiking for them. I would be ruining the Pacific Ocean for them. I would be ruining so many things. And I thought about how devastated I was when I lost my parents and how that was contributing factor to my depression was grief that I am still struggling with. And it was enough for me.

22:20
to realize I didn't want to die. I just didn't want to live this way anymore. And I hugged the side of the trail until I got around. Unbeknownst to me, my husband had called my daughter. She had said, call this friend so that you have someone to help you look. So my friend who lived nearby was trying to find me. My husband was trying to find me. And they knew where I was. They knew the general vicinity I was going to, but this place has...

22:48
at least seven different hiking trails. So they were going to have to guess. And as I'm walking along, all of a sudden I see my friend walking towards me and I thought, again, my brain wasn't thinking. I was like, what are the odds that she would be here? Not even thinking like my husband would have called her. Like that didn't occur to me. And she grabbed me and she hugged me and we hadn't seen each other since the beginning of COVID. And she immediately texted my husband, I've got her. And

23:17
She brought me to a bench and she sat me down. And the first thing I said was, I'm fine. I'm really OK. And she was like, no, you're not. And it's OK that you're not OK. And that afternoon, I had to make a call to the equivalent of my health provider's 911 number for mental health. And I had to say the words out loud when they asked.

23:43
Did you have a plan? Were you ready to execute on that plan? I said yes, and it was.

23:51
Sorry.

23:56
It was horrifying on one level to think that I was at that point, but it also felt like when I got off the phone and I realized that someone was going to help me, it felt like a weight had been lifted that I'd been carrying for a really, really long time. I wish I could say that I immediately got the help I needed, but I still had this resistance to...

24:25
taking medication to admitting that I was so, like in my mind, I now see that that's not true. And that's one of the messages I feel so strongly about getting out, that I felt flawed, deeply, deeply flawed. And that was pain and shame, so much shame. It's unnecessary, but it is a shame that we can bring along with that because we feel like we should be perfect. Yeah.

24:52
Everyone expects us to be a certain way. You know, it really stood out about that story. I mean, I'm sorry that you got to that place and that you had to imagine things and kind of plan things out. But what stood out to me was your friend sitting there with you and telling you, nobody expects you to be perfect. And it is 100% okay if you're not okay. Like.

25:20
Nobody is okay all the time. Was that one of the first times that someone you loved told you like, you can be broken and we will love you anyway? You know, I wish I could say, Matt, that that was true, but my family is great. They tell me that all the time. I just didn't believe it myself. My husband is so kind and how many nights I would wake him up at two in the morning worried about something totally.

25:50
unimportant and my sisters are both great. My kids were supportive. I just, it didn't matter how many times people told me, I hadn't, I didn't take it in. I, I talked to my kids. I talked to other people in my life about getting help, about taking medication, about how good it can be. And again, I was totally understanding and non-judgmental towards others.

26:19
But for myself, it was a different set of rules, a different world. And the good thing that came out of it is that when I finally accepted that I needed to take medication, that I needed to do CBT, that I needed to get, do some talk therapy until I worked my way through so that I could get back to strategies that worked for me again, I now see

26:48
that I've accepted that. I still don't love myself, but I've accepted that it's OK to not do everything right. It's OK to make mistakes. It's OK to send an email with the wrong closing. The little things that I thought I had to do perfectly, I recognize now.

27:14
don't matter. They don't matter. And I think that that was the silver lining in this.

27:25
Truly, I hope I never have to go back. I hope I never feel that way again. I still have down days. I think, no matter what you're doing, we all have bad days. But I haven't had that feeling since. And that is...

27:47
It's also, and I, it's kind of like once you've gone to that point, everything else feels like a gift. Every day since then, I've recognized is a gift. I'm lucky to be here. I'm lucky that I had that glimmer of thought about my kids. I'm lucky that

28:12
my husband called my friend and I'm lucky that she was there. And I'm lucky there's so many ways that this could have gone wrong. And now I feel a gratitude for still being around. I think about when you said that the kind of this, what came from this is like the acceptance that like nobody's perfect. I can things that go wrong are okay.

28:40
and I am okay and I am a full human, even when I make mistakes. I argue a little that that might be an element of your version of self-love in the sense of like acceptance. And because I think your version of self-love is going to look very different because of the years of fighting for that perfection. I feel the same way. I think it's important to realize that self-love

29:08
for some of us is not gonna look like it does for other people. Like I think it's gonna look different for you. And I feel like you're in a space where there is some and maybe it's masked in a different way, right? Like I think we're covering it. We cover it up because there might be also a fear that if we do have this self love, what does that look like? Who am I if I have this? Cause I'm not that person.

29:35
Right. I feel that way. I'm maybe I'm projecting here and I probably am because you know, this is how I do on this podcast. But like, does that any of that resonate with you? Absolutely. Absolutely. I do think that that's true. And I think it's again, I can see so it's funny how you can see things in other people and you can't see it in yourself. But I, I think there's two things that are that self-loving that that I struggle with. One is that I, I feel

30:04
intense love for others. And so it's a really great thing, right? I love love. I love the idea of love. And I love the people in my life. And I'm not afraid to tell people, like my friends and people I've just met, oh my God, I love you. That is fine. So I think that I'm comparing my baby steps of self-love to that expansive love that I can so freely feel for others.

30:34
And so it comes up wanting. But I also think that something you just said is really profound in that any kind of self-love I have is always gonna be tempered by those, you know what I mean, those early experiences. And it won't look like other people's. And that's okay. That's okay. Again, that's okay. And it won't look like your love for other people. Right, it won't look like, I don't know the, I mean.

31:03
there might be a different problem if people have that much love for themselves. That's true. I could be a narcissist. That would be awful. You know, so I could think that I was like these knees. Yeah, I mean, and that's okay. If you if that's how you feel, that's how you feel. And I'm not telling that you need to absorb some kind of self love. But I think there is an element of that because you've accepted the things that for so long you hated. You like I don't know, maybe that word is too strong. But no, no, no, no. I loathed myself.

31:32
you hated the fact that you would make mistakes, but those same mistakes were not mistakes that you considered if other people made it, right? Like you wouldn't have qualified those as mistakes. You would have been like, who cares? But for you, you absorbed it as something large. So I think even just if we're gonna call it a baby step, which I don't think it's a baby step, I think it's a big step, especially in the way that you've told your story and the way that you've created all your experiences because of that, I think it's a big step.

32:01
I think it's a big step to acknowledge that you're a flawed human like the rest of us because I don't think there's anyone out there that's not flawed. And I think those flawed pieces of us, I think that's what makes us interesting. That's what makes us connect to other people. Doing this podcast with over 130 something people now, I find that in those valleys is where I have the most connection to the people.

32:30
when they're telling their story. They could talk about winning this award or becoming the richest person in the world or whatever, and be like, I can't relate to any of that. So I think there's a lot more to connect to people when we do have these flaws and we learn from them and we grow from them and all these things that come across from that. And I think, I know this word is used a lot, but it also is admitting your faults, it makes you vulnerable.

32:58
And that's, I think, something that other people can relate to. And I think, honestly, this is maybe my optimism about humanity, is that when you see someone else being vulnerable and hurting, there is some part of our nature that wants to help and wants to connect to make someone feel better. And I think that when I think about

33:24
helping other people and how good that can make me feel to be able to help someone. There's a part of me that recognizes that when I'm vulnerable and when I'm in pain and someone helps me that I'm allowing them to have that feeling of helping me. Do you know what I mean? Like when you're, you know how people jump in when someone's got a problem and they wanna help you and I'm not good at asking for help. It's another part of, because

33:53
If I can do it all myself, right? Why do I need help? But. But can we? But we can't. We can't. And what's interesting is that my sister once said this to me. You're depriving people of the opportunity to help you. People want to help people. It's a part of our nature. And when you say no all the time, you're depriving people of that opportunity. But then don't you absorb that guilt? Oh.

34:23
of depriving, then it just becomes a cycle. Well, one of the things that I remember laughing about is that you can't work on perfectionism because then you're just trying to be more perfect. This is a fault. Now, my perfectionism has become a fault, so I'm going to be better at that. It's a self-perpetuating cycle. No, and I think of vulnerability...

34:46
in a different way and I think I approach it differently, but I like what you say because I think that people naturally wanna help others. And I think that's a nature of connecting to feel closer to other people. It's not necessarily I wanna fix you, I wanna do something for you, but I just wanna be closer to you. I wanna be a part of you, I wanna be a part of your life. When I think of vulnerability and the reason that I try to lean into...

35:11
if I'm having a bad day, if something's going wrong, if I'm feeling a certain way that as a guy, I shouldn't feel because society has told us that we shouldn't feel this way. We're only allowed to be mad or happy, whatever that might be. I find my vulnerability and the value in it, even though it's hard to say it out loud, it's hard to put it out there, is that there might be someone out there that is afraid to be vulnerable too.

35:38
And now this looks like a little bit like permission. That they can also be human and don't have to be perfect. And so if I can open that door for someone else to feel the real, cause I would imagine you, like you said, when you told that person on the phone that you didn't know that you needed help in some way, there's a release. There's like, it's out of me. It's in the world. Nothing I can do about it now, except acknowledge it and move through it.

36:06
So I find that there's a power in the vulnerability because it lets it out. It's so much messier up in your head. Yeah. After my dad died and I gave his eulogy, I realized that I had a lot of stories that I could share. And I actually started getting involved in a group here in San Diego called So Say We All, which is a narrative nonfiction storytelling group. And.

36:36
I started going to the shows and then I submitted something and the way it works is you submit to a theme at the beginning of the month. They pick seven stories, they assign you a writing coach and a performance coach, they're all volunteers, and two and a half weeks later you perform it in a bar full of strangers, at the beginning at least, after a while they're friends. But I started doing those and it was that exact experience that you're describing. Afterwards people would come up to me and say,

37:06
you made me feel less alone. I'm so surprised that you had this problem or that you, that experience, my God, not that exact thing, but I had something similar happen to me. Thank you so much for sharing your story. And I realized that we're all walking around with these stories and the more we tell them and the more we share, not only do we feel less alone, but we give people, as you said, permission.

37:35
to share theirs and to let go of their burden. And that's one of the things that has inspired me to keep going with writing and to put stories and books out into the world that perhaps opens someone up to that experience and to say to them, here's some people that are flawed and here's what happened in their lives. And this is, you might see part of yourself in one of these characters. You might see...

38:05
of yourself in one of the stories that I tell about my own life. And that makes you feel able to, if I can do it, you can do it kind of thing, right? Like if I can tell you the most, the most ridiculous thing I ever did, or the scariest thing I ever did, or the time I was most vulnerable, that gives you permission, like you said, to do the same. And it really is true. I mean, I mean, how many of us are walking around with this like,

38:33
secret shame about a way that we felt about a certain thing. Like maybe it wasn't traditional, it wasn't the way that we were supposed to feel about something. Hearing someone's story, someone vulnerable enough to admit they felt a certain way validates a lot of us that are walking around with the shame about a particular moment. For instance, I had a woman on the podcast last year.

39:00
And she was talking to her, she lost her father when she was about five years old. She was like in the room when he passed away and grew up without him. And she said something. And we both just realized that we had the same experience as teenagers where we both imagined or told ourselves that our parents were in witness protection and that someday we would come back. They would come back. And weird, right? Like I'm not gonna say that out loud to people around me because people are gonna be like, she's dead. You like saw her be buried.

39:30
But I had that feeling and then I carried that shame of thinking like, you're delusional for thinking that. And she said she had it and it validated my whole experience, right? Because it totally normalized something that I had carried for so long as like the weirdest feeling that is irrational. Like you point out some of the things. Well, it's like the ultimate hope though, right? Like it's the ultimate, they didn't actually die. They're still there, yeah. Right.

39:57
But you carry it around. So when you hear people's stories and you go through this group and you listen to other stories, I'm sure there's people in these groups, you've listened to their story, you haven't had the same experience, but something they said, you're like, I felt that way before. Yeah. And it was OK. And I think that, you know, the more I've done these performances and the more I share, the easier it is each time, a little bit easier to tell the story. It's a little bit.

40:26
the shame is moving away from me a little bit. And even just my own understanding of myself is, I'm giving an- Unraveling. I'm opening, yeah, I'm opening up to a better understanding of myself, which is, as you pointed out, might be a form of my self-love. It might be that I'm in recognizing all of these pieces of my life that didn't-

40:56
quite fit in the way that I thought they should, it might be that in being so open now and taking the mask off and letting people see who I really am, that that's allowing me to put that puzzle together and make it fit. I don't know if that makes sense. Yeah, and things might feel lighter. I wonder if this is a, I don't know if this is true for you, as a reformed perfectionist. I don't know what we're going to call you. I like that.

41:26
As someone that has experienced a life of perfectionism in some way or a battle maybe, do you find that the first time you told your story is quite different than the way you tell it now? Were there pieces where you didn't divulge as much before because, you know, like your story was very like down the main road and now you're just like, here's the whole thing. Here's the whole thing. And I also think yes, and I also think that I can now see

41:56
all of what led to it. I can admit that this was all... Not that my life was a lie, it wasn't. I was very true to my ideals, the things that I loved. And like I said, it didn't affect my relationships with others that much in that I was very accepting of others and still am. And I think most people are, as you put it, flawed. And my mom always told me...

42:22
when you truly love someone, you don't just love them for the things that you like about them. You love them for their whole self, even the things that you wish were different. That's what makes them who they are. And I can accept that for other people. But now I think that maybe I'm starting to see that that applies to myself. I don't think I'm there yet, but I think that that is, like you said, for a reform perfectionist to be able to say, I...

42:52
I'm so far from all right. I'm so far from OK that... That it's OK that you are? And that it's OK. And also that I can maybe stop striving for it, because I can recognize now that that's just not possible. It's not possible to be the person that I thought I was trying to be. But imagine like the 20 years ago version of you saying, I'm not there yet.

43:19
I wish there yet. Yeah, you know when people say what would you say to your younger self? Well, I will ask you that later, but I'm gonna ask you a different one. Oh my god I would just say get on medication sweetheart like like but you wouldn't get some help. I know I know listen I know because I know that version of you was was not ready. I was ready. Exactly. You weren't ready I wasn't ready to believe it. I wasn't ready to believe that I couldn't be perfect

43:46
You weren't ready there, but you were also probably, in a sense, telling yourself that you could figure it out. You just need more time. Yeah. I just need more time. I'm almost there. I'll figure it out. And it's interesting because I think that one of the things that one night at 2 in the morning, I remember exactly when it was because I was talking about something I mentioned earlier, that I had signed an email with what I thought was the wrong closing. I said, all the best instead of thanks, or something ridiculous.

44:16
And my husband said to me, honey, you're just not that important. No, but he said it in, no one else is awake right now thinking of how you closed an email. You are putting way too much weight on these things that don't matter to anybody else except you. And he was absolutely right. And...

44:46
I think that it, I didn't see it then, but I can now see that some of the best advice ever, right? Like it doesn't matter when you make some of these mistakes because nobody else is judging you the way you're judging yourself. Nobody else is putting those, putting all that shame and guilt on you. You're doing it to yourself. Yeah. Which is a huge eye opener when you realize that. When that...

45:16
when that curtain falls and you're like, oh, this was my decision all along and these are the things that I did. I had a very similar moment and I may have said this in the episode that you listened to but like I went to therapy in my 30s because other things in my life were like a mess. Like work was like crazy and it's bringing me all sorts of misery. And we were getting through all the things and my therapist looked at me and she's like, you realize that...

45:42
every decision that you've made since you were eight years old was with that eight year old fear based brain. You were afraid as that eight year old and everything you've done since then. And I was like, what? That doesn't sound. And then I was like, no, right. Yeah. And it's like, there's evidence out there that people, when you have a trauma that you experience, that you're some, a part of you will always be emotionally stuck there. Like, and that you have to, you have to acknowledge that at some point and kind of

46:13
comfort that person that was that age, comfort yourself and give yourself grace. And that's hard to do when you're a perfectionist, but it's hard to do for anyone. It's hard to give ourselves grace. Especially if you've kind of like, like you did like I did, like that was your life. That was how you live. That was your normal. Like that was not something you were putting on. That was not something, it was just.

46:40
an everyday occurrence and that's the way you lived your life. It wasn't like you chose to do it that way. You just did. It was something you absorbed. And that's kind of where my question early on was like, why did you think you were acting this way? Like, was there something that you were doing it for? And it was like, I was the fourth of five, you know, and I was trying to stand out. I was trying to get noticed that, you know, like I was my own person, not just one of five, if you will. That was my role in the family dynamic. I was always the peacemaker. I was always the one that...

47:10
But it's like, where do I come from? Where do we... How do we put this on ourselves? I don't know. Because like when I like, I mean, it's, you know, we all have, it's funny. I'm really good friends with my brothers and sisters. And we, when we get together, it's crazy to watch how quickly we fall into our roles. And we do. We have these, we recognize it, we talk about it, but we still do it. You know what I mean?

47:40
And I remember once just a few years ago, we were all together and somebody was having an argument and I stepped in to try to solve it, to try to make peace. And my little brother, he was like, just stop it. Let us, we don't agree. Like, it's okay. You don't have to fix it. And I was like, oh my gosh, I don't, you're right. But we just fall into those roles and we fall into the patterns. Like you said, a pattern you set up when you were eight, you didn't realize until you were 30.

48:10
in talking to somebody that that's what you were doing. And then imagine the shame that came with that after that for the next year or so, being like, why did I do that? But, you know, we're humans. We just go through these things and I think how blessed are we that we can have a conversation like this that includes self-love, I'm gonna say it, for both of us because we're acknowledging the things that we've battled.

48:34
We're acknowledging the things that we know were just not perfect. We're acknowledging all these things and these moments in our lives that have been hard, but we've learned from that. So I think there's some kind of honor that we're giving ourselves in this open dialogue with someone that we just met less than an hour ago. I think there's, imagine the, I don't know, I don't think I would have done this 20 years ago, talking to someone this openly about my flaws and my broken pieces and...

49:04
listening to someone else's and absorbing theirs. You know, like, so I think we are showing ourselves self-love. I, yeah, I mean, I'm not forcing it on you. No, no, I see. I see what you're saying. Maybe tomorrow. No, I see what you're saying. And I think the other thing that is is great about these types of experiences is.

49:29
So I am involved in this Writers Festival here in San Diego. And one of our taglines is, before we share our stories, we are strangers. And afterwards, we are family. And I think that's true. I think it sharing your life stories and giving people, as you are, the opportunity to share their stories and that it opens the world up. It opens the possibility to make connections with other people.

49:58
in ways that you can't otherwise. And I have found over the last several years that the more I share the stories of sort of the not great parts of my life or the struggles of my life, the more I hear the valleys, the more I hear from other people about their valleys. And we are always, I mean, I can't tell you how many times we'll be like, what you? Oh my God, I had no idea.

50:27
People I've known for years, right? People I've known for years that all of a sudden I find something out about them and I go, oh wow, like I had no idea.

50:39
No, I think we need more of this. I always kind of envision this as like the conversations that people should be having versus the, hey, how are you good? How are you? Like how many times have you said good? How are you when you weren't good? In fact, the very, the first book I wrote was stemmed from that experience. I was, I think I mentioned earlier that my stepdaughter's mother died of a heroin overdose when she was 16.

51:07
And the night that I had to tell my stepdaughter that her mom had died, I was the vice president of our parents' association and we had an event at school. And I had to go just for a little while because I had planned it. And I remember walking around for the first 10 minutes answering that question, how are you? Fine. How are you? And getting in the car and thinking, you just lied to everyone. You just, you're barely hanging on.

51:35
and you made it seem like everything was great. And it made me start thinking about how many people are out there in the world doing that. And- A lot. Right? How many, and that the person, as I always say, the person behind you at Starbucks, it seems kind of grouchy or unkind. You have no idea what they're going through. They could have just found out that their husband has cancer or their mother is dying or-

52:04
They couldn't make the payment on their mortgage, right? Like, yeah, to not bring it on to other people. It's something we're very weird as humans. I think we absorb things and we feel things in weird ways. Yeah, sometimes. Maybe we don't need to put all that energy into it in that particular way. But yeah, I mean, thank you for sharing your story. I'm curious, like if you were looking at this version of you, like, what's the biggest difference between this version of you and the

52:33
18-year-old version of you or the 25-year-old version of you in the way that you look at life? Oh, gosh. You know, I am much more attuned to the small moments in life now and the appreciating every little passing moment and realizing on a deeper level and not on an intellectual level, but on a gut level, that idea that the past is the past.

53:03
the future hasn't happened yet, all we have is the now. All we have is the moment we're in. And so I stop and look at plants and I listen to birdsong or I really, really allow myself to enjoy that scoop of ice cream or I am giving my daughter a hug and I just hold on for a couple more seconds and say like, remember this feeling. This is what matters. This...

53:32
There's beauty all around you. The previous version of you was worrying about the future, right? Yes, or the past. Something I had done wrong. Like, I could spend all my energy worrying on the things that I had no, that I could not control, that I could not do anything about. And all that energy, all that wasted energy, that's the one regret I might say in my life, is that I wasted a lot of energy on things that...

54:02
that didn't matter, that I couldn't do anything about. My grandmother had some words when she was passing in the hospice house. And it was like right before she kind of was, she was still there, but she wasn't really there. And she was like, you know, I wish I hadn't worried so much because all that matters is love in the end. Because she was looking around and all the people that she loved were standing there and around her and with her in her last moments. And...

54:29
none of the things that she worried about for those 80 years mattered. So I often think about that when I'm wasting, if you will, wasting time worrying about things that might not even happen. Or that already happened. Yeah, that already happened. Nothing I can do about it. So now I will find myself saying, like literally saying out loud, well, that was in the past. Like I'll do something and I'll go, oh, God, and then I'll just go, it's in the past. Can't do anything about it.

54:58
So I think that was the biggest thing, this shift that happened. It wasn't just that moment, right? It's all the things that happened since then, all the changes I've purposefully made. And as we talked about, a purposeful setting of goals of loving myself and getting rid of all of that criticism, that is all part of it. It's an ongoing process. But it started from that moment. It started from that moment of...

55:28
like, I don't want to live this way to well, what, how do you want to live? Like, if you don't want to live this way, what is it yourself? Yeah. And I can't do it myself. No, I can't do it myself. And you got to use the people around you. So you kind of jumped the shark a little and so I'd love to kind of wrap up these conversations with a question and I, I know it's not possible. And you can't go back to this version of you. But if you knew, if there was some way to go back to Anastasia walking that path,

55:57
up that hill or to that cliff, thinking about all the ways that you need to do things. Is there anything if you bumped into her you would want to say to her?

56:13
The first thing that popped into my head, which seems... But now it's there and I can't get it out as you matter.

56:24
your life matters to other people and...

56:30
That's, I think the message that I would want to give anybody who's feeling that way is there's, there is something else. There is another way to live there. If, if this isn't what you want, you, you, there will be another way and you will find it if you stick around, if you leave, you'll never find it. But if you stick around, you may find a better way to live.

57:00
you mattered other people. Yeah, you matter in this moment and you matter in future moments and you matter in past moments. I think it's a good message. I think it's, I mean, obviously it's not possible, but it's interesting to think back to those moments. I think back to sitting across from my dad and him telling me that my mom had died. And I think like that kid just needed to know, like it's gonna be hard, but you're gonna be okay. And he just needed like a hug, you know? He just needed to know that like.

57:28
He was heard and he could be sad whenever he needed it. And so it's the same kind of thing. It's like, you matter, like this is hard and this is an important moment in your life, but you matter to yourself too. Like you probably need to know that you matter to yourself and look where you are now. You're doing all these things and you're sharing your story and who knows? Like my goal is like every episode, someone hears someone's story and they feel less alone or they feel.

57:55
hope or they feel something that's like validation of the way that they felt and it was okay. So thank you for being a part of this journey and helping people in that way. Well, thank you for giving me the opportunity and thank you for putting this out into the world and giving other people the opportunity as you've just given me. It's remarkable. I'll tell you, it's some of it selfish because I feel like it's so healing in this in this the eight year old that walks on my side now, you know, that eight year old version of math that walks with me.

58:26
it's healing him in some way. And I know that sounds kind of weird, but in the same way, it's important to help that version that didn't get all that back then. So thank you for that. You mentioned writing and books and things like that. Is there a way that tell us a little bit how people can get in your orbit, learn more about you, connect with you, all the things. My second book just came out yesterday. It's called The Other Side of Nothing. Congratulations. Thank you.

58:54
It's called The Other Side of Nothing. The Kirkus Review is literally, it's a stunning story of mental illness and its challenges. It's all about a journey that two young people make cross-country after they fall in love and leave a psychiatric facility against medical advice and their mothers who are trying to find them before things go sideways. But it's all about not just what it's like to be someone struggling.

59:24
with mental health challenges, but what it's like to be a loved one of someone who's struggling when you can't fix them and you can't make things right and you want more than anything to do that. And, you know, they talk, everyone talks a lot about the helplessness and hopelessness that sometimes comes with depression and that affects the families as well.

59:54
and that there are resources out there for families and that they don't have to be alone either. It's something we still struggle in society to talk about death and to talk about suicide and to talk about mental illness. And all of those people, as you put earlier, one of the goals of telling our stories is to feel less alone. People in those situations are already feeling alone. That's part of the problem.

01:00:24
And when we don't talk about it, it just makes them feel more alone. And so the more we can, as, as our comfort level dictates, everyone's different and some people aren't going to feel comfortable getting on a podcast and talking about these things. But if you can find someone to talk to. And, uh, if, if we can train the people, if we can train everyone to understand what are the signs, what are we looking for? Um, and how can we talk about these things?

01:00:53
in a way that so many people have come to me and said, I don't know how to talk to someone who's in that position. I wouldn't know what to say, so I just don't say anything at all. If we can give people the tools, then we can maybe save some lives of people that are feeling alone. So that's what the book's about. Good on you for putting that out into the world. Yeah, for people who are watching this, is it? It's the other side of nothing. Awesome, I like the cover. And...

01:01:23
Yeah, it's, it's a. So how can people find that it's on? It's everywhere books are sold. You can get it on Amazon. You can get it at your bookstore. Um, and, uh, yeah, uh, my website is my name, Anastasia Zodiac.com, which is not easy to spell, but we will put that in the show. And you can find me on all of the platforms on just at, at Anastasia Zodiac. So it's I'm on Instagram.

01:01:50
All the places. Well, we will, for people listening, if you want to check out our book, please, we'll put the link in the show notes. We'll put website link. We'll put some of your socials there wherever you're most active and you want to connect with Anastasia. I'm sure if you're having a moment or you want to share a part of your story, I'm sure she's probably pretty open to hearing from you. Absolutely. I think it's important to create that space for people too.

01:02:18
And know that you can reach out to, I did not know until I was writing this book and writing parts of the afterword and stuff is that a lot of the resources that are out there for people who are struggling themselves with mental illness, they also have services for families, friends, community members. You can call 988, the crisis hotline, as a family member and they will give you advice on what to do.

01:02:47
And I think so many people don't know that. So there are a lot of resources out there. That's good advice. I think that the more we put stories out, let people share their stories, that whole sunlight is the greatest disinfectant kind of thing is that the more we put it out there, it's not that we're normalizing it, but we're making it safe. We're making it a safer thing to talk about and less uncomfortable for others so that...

01:03:16
therefore more people are sharing, and then it just becomes part of our conversation, and we can help people through these things and not feel the shame that we've assumed and all these other things that come along with it. So thank you for doing what you are doing in all the ways that you're doing it, because I think it's so important. And thank you for listening, for anyone that's listening to this episode, thank you. It helps me heal a little bit. It helps Anastasia heal a little bit. And if you know someone that...

01:03:43
needs to hear Anastasia's story, please share this episode. We'd love that. If you like any other episodes or subscribe and do all those things, I'm not gonna ask for all those fun things, but please share this story with anyone that you think might need to hear it. And I think with that, I'm gonna say goodbye and I'll be back next week with a brand new episode of the Life Shift podcast. Thanks again, Anastasia. Yeah, thank you, Matt.